Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were retreating yesterday after rebels recaptured the key eastern town of Ajdabiya in their first significant victory since the launch of the Western-led air strikes a week ago.

US President Barack Obama said the international mission had saved countless innocents from a “bloodbath” threatened by Gaddafi, and the rebels thanked France for its role in the military blitz but said “outside forces” could now leave the country.

However, Russia’s top general called the air strikes unsuccessful, and said a ground operation would probably be needed to topple the Libyan strongman.

Ajdabiya was “100 per cent in the hands of our forces, and we are pursuing Gaddafi’s forces on the road to Brega,” 80 kilometres farther west, a rebel spokesman, Shamsiddin Abdulmollah, told reporters in the stronghold of Benghazi.

“Who is on the back foot are Gaddafi’s forces because they no longer have air power and heavy weaponry available” after a week of bombing by coalition warplanes, he said.

Another spokesman, Ahmed Khalifa, said the rebels had taken at least 13 Gaddafi fighters who were being treating as prisoners of war.

A rebel fighter later told AFP insurgents retaken Brega also.

“We are in the centre of Brega,” Abdelsalam al-Maadani told AFP by telephone. “Gaddafi’s forces are on the retreat and should now be at Al-Bisher (30 kilometres) west of Brega.”

A journalist travelling with them confirmed seeing rebels in control of the centre of the oil town, and told AFP government forces had completely withdrawn.

The rebels, backed by the Western barrage, earlier poured into Ajdabiya, where destroyed tanks and military vehicles littered the road, AFP correspondents at the scene reported.

The bodies of at least two pro-Gaddafi fighters were surrounded by onlookers taking photos, while a mosque and many houses bore the scars of heavy shelling as the rebels celebrated, firing into the air and shouting “God is greater.”

Outside the town, the bodies of 21 loyalist soldiers had been collected, a medic told AFP.

Osama al-Qasy from Benghazi’s Hawari hospital said the bodies were found 10 kilometres west of Ajdabiya. Other charred corpses remained in the desert, covered by blankets.

Regime loyalists had dug in at Ajdabiya after being forced back from the road to Benghazi by the first coalition air strikes. They were accused by residents of brutalising the population.

Resident Ibrahim Saleh, 34, told AFP: “The tanks were firing on the houses non-stop. I couldn’t move from my house for days. There was no water or fuel or communications, and when people went out even to get fuel they were fired on.

“The coalition air strikes were yesterday and the day before. They attacked from the skies and the revolutionaries came in afterwards and freed the city.”

Ajdabiya, straddling the key road to Benghazi, is the first town to fall back into rebel hands since a coalition of Western forces launched UN-backed air strikes on March 19 to stop Gaddafi’s­ forces attacking civilians.

But in Libya’s west, where the capital Tripoli and most of Gaddafi’s support is located, the port city of Misrata was in dire need of outside help from coalition jets and humanitarian groups because of attacks by Gaddafi forces, the rebels said.

“Please, do something about Misrata,” one member of the rebellion, Mustafa Gheriani, pleaded.

“People there are willing to take casualties. They need intervention,” he said.

“Please, they need a floating hospital.”

Abdulmollah said he believed a hospital ship organised by non-governmental organisations was en route to Misrata under Nato escort from Malta.

Elsewhere, huge explosions shook a military site in an eastern suburb of Tripoli early yesterday as Western forces piled pressure on the regime.

The blasts left a radar facility in flames in Tajura, home to several military bases, a witness told AFP.

“The district was shaken by three explosions in succession,” the resident said, adding that the explosions had shattered windows.

“The raid targeted a military radar site which is still on fire,” added the resident, who lives nearby.